Archive for the ‘
My attempt at humor ’ Category

It’s finally been done, users with an @allmybase.com email address can now send email to users @hotmail.com, @mail.usp.edu, and other addresses that use Microsoft Network (MSN) Live services. Some of you may not even be aware that you couldn’t send email to these users, so let me Tarantino this story for you a bit and go back to the beginning. The short of this story is that email services are now restored with minimal continuing effects, and if you are receiving the Microsoft 550 SC-001 bounce, [File a ticket with them by clicking right here]. But, if you want the good details of what it takes to get a result from Microsoft, read on. It should be mildly entertaining at best.

It all started when a user of mine complained that she could not send email to users @eden.rutgers.edu and users @mail.usp.edu (college friends). I checked my maillog, and found lines like these ones:

I own and administer the domain allmybase.com. I have several
constituents who are trying to send email to people on your campus.
They are getting their emails bounced with the messages outlined
below.

I figured I’d contact you since 64.247.29.70 does indeed resolve to
darkflame.allmybase.com and vice versa. Please let me know if there is
anything else I can help with.

Thanks!
–Benjamin Rose

Note, though, that that email had two recipients, Rutgers helpdesk and the abuse department at hotmail. Why abuse? Well, simply because in the actual error message in my maillog, the URL http://postmaster.live.com was given as a resource center. I checked this site, and it has absolutely NOTHING except some links to sell your Microsoft products. Awesome. The only email address I could find was, in fact, the one I sent to, which is actually supposed to be for reporting spam and account abuse. I figured something was better than nothing, though, so whatever. I was wrong, as I nearly instantly got a bounce:

Thank you for reporting spam to the Windows Live Hotmail Support Team. This is an auto-generated response to inform you that we have received your submission. Please note that you will not receive a reply if you respond directly to this message.

Unfortunately, in order to process your request, Windows Live Hotmail Support needs additional information to validate and confirm the abuse.

The easiest way to report spam to Hotmail is to click on the “Report Spam” or “Junk” button provided by your ISP. Hotmail has systems set up with most major ISPs so that when their users click on “Report Spam” or “Junk” buttons, we automatically receive a notification. Check the link below to find out if your ISP is included. If you cannot find your ISP in the list, please forward the spam or abusive mail to us as an attachment. Simply start a new mail message, attach the spam to that mail, and send it.

Windows Live Hotmail processes complaints received in the Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) format. ARF is the industry standard for reporting spam complaints. Using the ARF format helps us ensure that someone can only report complaints about mail actually generated by a Windows Live Hotmail user. A valid ARF formatted complaint is a message containing the entire original spam or abusive message (including all message headers) as an attachment. To learn more about ARF, review the draft RFC at:
http://www.mipassoc.org/arf/specs/draft-shafranovich-feedback-report-05.txt.

For additional information about reporting abuse to Windows Live Hotmail, please visit:
https://windowslivehelp.com/solutions/safety/archive/2009/03/23/how-to-report-abuse-or-spam-in-windows-live-hotmail.aspx

For more information on how to protect your email, please visit:

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/email/default.mspx.

For more information about Window Live Hotmail’s efforts and technologies used to fight spam and abusive e-mails please visit:

http://postmaster.live.com/FightingJunk.aspx

Oh how helpful, more links to products Microsoft would love to sell me, and a quote from an RFC for spam reporting. Lovely. Thank you Microsoft for the RFC reference, I know you’re all about open standards and compliance after all! Rutgers, on the other hand, could not have been MORE helpful:

We require that all incoming mail come from hosts that pass a few Internet standards tests. The error message below indicates that your’s is failing the first, a Reverse DNS lookup test. The core of the error reads:

Hmmm okay this is pretty specific, I’ve only ever encountered the need
for reverse DNS to only return something, not the specific domain from
which the information is being sent.

Thank you for your help, I have updated my DNS and if this is indeed
the problem, it should be rectified once the changes propagate. You
can tentatively close this ticket as resolved, I’ll be in contact
again to confirm shortly.

In the meantime, are there any other tests your servers do that I
should be aware of? My server requires SSL, SASL auth, and does a
virus scan of the incoming and outgoing messages, so it should be good
on most tests.

The other main test is HELO/EHLO which requires a fully qualified domain name in communication. From what I can see in the below error message, I think that you should pass that test.

If you do not, please send email from the system that is failing that contains the error message you get to the address:

help@spam.rutgers.edu

That address is NOT requiring those tests to be successful (and hence gets MORE spam) and thus you should be able to reach it from sites that cannot reach this or other addresses.

Dan

I waited another day for DNS changed to propagate. Checking the next day whether or not I could send any email to users @eden.rutgers.edu, I was quite happy to find that the problem had been fixed. I reported the ticket as resolved and thanked Dan for his work in bringing my issue to a speedy resolve. I had hoped that this would also be the root cause to why Microsoft was blocking my outgoing emails. Wait, let’s actually examine that use of words there. BLOCKED. BOUNCED. Microsoft is not just filtering your incoming mail and maybe tagging some mail as spam, no, they are ACTIVELY making the choice for their users as to who gets to email them and who does not. What can this mean for you, the end user? Your best friend from high school trying to get back in touch with you? Could be blocked. Your company asking you some very important question? Kaput. For crying out loud, [Microsoft has actually once blocked all of email from Verizon users!] This to me seems like bad policy. I hoped that this issue may resolve itself in due time, so I gave it a couple of weeks. Two weeks or so later, my users were still unable to send email to the users on MSN live accounts (still includes hotmail and some companies/schools that rely on Microsoft for their email). I happened to casually mention something to my brother, [Jonathan Rose of Farious Net Solutions] over a lunchtime conversation. Turns out he’s having the same problems that I was with Microsoft, same EXACT error message, same UNHELPFUL link to a solution. What do our servers have in common? IP space. His mail server is 64.247.29.67, mine is 64.247.29.70. On a hunch, I nmap’d port 25 of 64.247.29.0/24 and found two more mail servers open for smtp connections in this IP space. Now, Jon only owns 64.247.29.64-127, and both these other mail servers were outside of this IP space. Running a blacklist check against our two mail servers, everything turned up squeaky clean, as expected. However, running a check against those other two IP’s turned out to be probably the root cause of this issue, they were on several different blacklists. It became clear to me why Microsoft should not be trusted with the decision as to what mail gets delivered to a user’s inbox and what doesn’t, as IT BLOCKED AN ENTIRE 24-BLOCK WHEN TWO IP’S IN IT, OWNED BY DIFFERENT PEOPLE THAN US, HAD BAD SENDER REPUTATIONS!

I was pissed at this point. I decided I would give Microsoft a call to discuss their policies and let them know just how stupid an action like this is. I checked Microsoft’s website for a phone number for MSN tech support. They couldn’t have hid it better, because I searched for a good while and didn’t even find one. Guess what number I could find, though? Microsoft sales, of course. Oh well, the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single footstep. So I called the sales department and pounded the 0 key until I got a person. He was the only polite person I’d encounter on this journey to an answer. Here’s the conversation’s transcript, word for word.

Him: Thank you for calling Microsoft, my name is Tom, how may I help you today?
Me: Hi, yeah, I’m in the totally wrong department. I have an email server that I administer that is having it’s outgoing email blocked by hotmail’s incoming servers, and I was wondering if you could transfer me to the tech support department that might cover something like that.
Him: I’d be happy to. I think that would fall under the category of MSN support, so I’ll transfer you over to them. Please hold.
Me: Thank you.

== 6 minutes later ==

Him: Hello and thank you for calling MSN tech support, can I please have your account number?
Me: Ummm I don’t actually have an account, I have an email server that I administer that is having it’s outgoing email blocked by hotmail’s incoming servers, and I was wondering if you could help me rectify the situation.
Him: What was your name again?
Me: Ben Rose
Him: Ok, and what is your account number?
Me: No, no, you’re not listening to me, I don’t have an account, I just need some SMTP support for outgoing emails.
Him: We can’t help you if you don’t have an account with us.
Me: So you want me to register for a free hotmail account before you’ll help me?
Him: No, this line is only for paid subscribers of the MSN Live services. I can’t help you if you don’t have a paid-for account.
Me: So to everyone else, you pretty much just say ‘screw you, not our problem?’
Him: No sir, we do our best to help.
Me: Ok, so please do your best to help.
Him: Well, we can’t help you if you don’t have an account. May I have your account number?
Me: OH. MY. GOD. Just transfer me to your manager.
Him: I’m sorry, I can’t do that.
Me: You can’t transfer me to your manager?
Him: Correct.
Me: You CAN’T, or you WON’T?
Him: I can’t.
Me: This is unbelievable. What do you do for people who don’t pay for an account, but still have issues with your services?
Him: Please visit microsoftlivehelp.com and check the knowledge base. You will find our knowledge base there. Have a good day, sir.
*click*

I’ve never encountered a more rude tech support person in my life. What kind of company policy prevents a support person from transferring a person to their manager unless they have a paid account? It doesn’t even make any sense! Ok well I have another lead, I’ll have to check out that site the guy just mentioned to me. I visited it, and there was a search field in the corner. Alright, I put the error message from the maillog into the box and hit enter. Results actually came back from other users, at least 50, with the same problem. [They reported it on a forum and a Windows Live rep responded saying he’d file a ticket for these people himself.] This isn’t exactly optimal, but I suppose it will do. I needed to sign up for an account on Windows Live before I could post a message asking for help, though, so I guess it comes full circle. I set up an alias on my server so as to be able to drop the email address immediately after this problem was fixed, and registered for an account. What happened next even I couldn’t have forseen. The site, when attempting to log me in, went into an infinite redirect loop between the forum and the login page, each time with no difference and no pause. Well, I am on Firefox on Linux, and this is a Microsoft website/product… so I borrowed my rommate’s laptop and fired up internet explorer. SAME. EXACT. PROBLEM. Infinite redirects. On the support website of a multi-billion dollar company. Using their browser. HOW?!?

I decided I’d just forget getting help from Microsoft at this point, I was to the end of my rope. I fired up the amazing google machine to see what the user community had to say about this error code. After about a half hour of googling, I came across this link: [Sender Information for Hotmail Delivery.] Even the person who posted the link on the 3rd party forum said he doesn’t believe this form is actually linked to anywhere on the Microsoft websites. How this was supposed to be found, I have no idea, but it looked like I might finally get some help. I filled out the form as completely as possible, making sure to give all the requested information lest my cries fall on deaf ears. I filled out the CAPTCHA at the bottom and hit submit. And then I waited. And waited. Annnnnd waited. Then I got the most amazing page ever: “The ticketing system is currently unavailable, please try again later.” WHAT?!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? Of course, pushing the back button in the browser resulted in all of the form being reset, so I’d have to fill in all the information again. Defeated, I retired to bed for the night.

The next day, I filled out the form again and hit submit. I waited and I waited, and eventually I GOT CONFIRMATION OF A TICKET BEING FILED SUCCESSFULLY!!! Oh happy days!!! But then the best was, of course, yet to come in the email chain that followed. Below is the email chain with minimal interjection posted between emails, just so you get the full effect of my frustrations.

The deliverability issues on IP(s) (64.247.29.70, 64.247.29.67) were based on negative filter verdicts or other IP reputation issues that caused some (or) all of your mail to be deleted and/or potentially blocked.

In order to further investigate your concern, please create SPF records for your domain and enroll your IPs to the Junk Mail Reporting Program.

I also heard the other day your service has done fun things like block
all email from Verizon, and less recently, all email from yahoo. How
is this a good idea?

I looked into it, and it seems 64.247.29.2 and 64.247.29.164 have IP
reputation problems. It wouldn’t surprise me if your service simply
blocked all of 64.247.29.*, even though I own and administer
64.247.29.64-127 and none of these IPs have reputation problems.

Please don’t make me jump through hoops just to have mail work for
your service and your service alone. I have over 100 domain names on
this IP space, and email worked before about a week ago to users on
your service. Please just whitelist my IP space again and we can just
go back to not having any problems.

If this is impossible for you to do, please escalate this ticket to
someone who can.

Hi,
Thank you for contacting Windows Live Hotmail Domain Support. My name is Manny and I will be glad to help you.

Your IP 64.247.29.70 and 64.247.29.67 were blocked by Windows Live Hotmail because the majority of all the email that you send to Hotmail has been judged to be spam by Windows Live Hotmail’s internal filtering system. We have conducted an investigation into the emails originating from your IP space and we have implemented a fix for your deliverability problem. This fix may take 24 – 48 hours to replicate completely throughout our system.

Please note that lifting the block does not guarantee that your email will be delivered to a user’s inbox. However, enrollment in our JMR program and having your IPs registered with Sender ID will help with your mail delivery to your recipient’s inbox, thereby improving your IP’s reputation as well.

. Please ensure that you have published SPF records for your sending domains and register with Sender ID. You can find additional information and submit your domain for inclusion into the Sender ID program at http://www.microsoft.com/senderID. Please note that technical standards (RFC 4408) discourage use of “ptr” for performance and reliability reasons.

. Monitor user complaints. Hotmail also has a sender complaint feedback loop program called the Junk Email Reporting Program (JMRP). Enrollment in this free program will benefit you as a sender as it will keep your email lists updated and populated with interested Windows Live Hotmail Customers. This program will help you to remove those Windows Live Hotmail Customers who do not want to receive emails from your company. If you are interested in joining this program, please visit https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&ct=eformts

. Hotmail has created the Smart Network Data Services program. This is a service that helps legitimate email senders work with their customers and partners to reduce spam originating from their IP. To register, please go to http://postmaster.msn.com/snds/. This program allows a sender to monitor the ‘health’ of their IPs.

While using the SNDS tool, enrollment in the JMRP or having your IPs registered with Sender ID will not allow emails from your mail servers to bypass our filters, these are in place to help legitimate companies deliver their emails to Hotmail Customers.

. SenderScore Certified Mail Program. Many legitimate mailers and marketers have qualified and joined this “white listing” program to improve mail deliverability and decrease email from being filtered to the Junk E-mail Folder. Sender Score is a third party program administered by Return Path. Sender Score (www.senderscorecertified.com) is the only white listing service to which we subscribe.

The troubleshooting steps in this email are recommendations only. Microsoft makes no guarantees that following these steps will guarantee deliverability to MSN, Windows Live Hotmail, or Live.com customers.

Thank you,
Manny
Windows Live Hotmail Domain Support

Wait, did you read that? Different tech support rep, and check out that part in bold. But, it looks like he lifted my block. I waited 3 days for the issue to go away, which worked out perfectly since that was actually my 21st birthday. Turns out, though, that the issue never went away…

This issue is still not resolved. Neither 64.247.29.67 nor
64.247.29.70 can send emails to users on your system. Specifically, I
have been testing sending email to an account @mail.usp.edu which has
their email service through you.

Please take another look into the issue and see why this is occurring.
It has been well over the 48-hour grace period you gave me, and I am
still not seeing any results.

Thanks,
–Ben

Not even sure why I’m still saying please or thank you anymore at this point…

This is Christine with Windows Live Hotmail Domain Support. We appreciate your patience while we are investigating your deliverability issue

I can see that we lifted the block where your IP was previously listed. However, one of our filters is actively blocking your messages because of its poor reputation within our system.

Please note that lifting the block does not guarantee that your email will be delivered to a user’s inbox. However, enrollment in our JMR program and having your IPs registered with Sender ID will help with your mail delivery to your recipient’s inbox, thereby improving your IP’s reputation as well.

· Please ensure that you have published SPF records for your sending domains and register with Sender ID. You can find additional information and submit your domain for inclusion into the Sender ID program at http://www.microsoft.com/senderID. Please note that technical standards (RFC 4408) discourage use of “ptr” for performance and reliability reasons.

· Monitor user complaints. Hotmail also has a sender complaint feedback loop program called the Junk Email Reporting Program (JMRP). Enrollment in this free program will benefit you as a sender as it will keep your email lists updated and populated with interested Windows Live Hotmail Customers. This program will help you to remove those Windows Live Hotmail Customers who do not want to receive emails from your company. If you are interested in joining this program, please visit https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&ct=eformts

After you have taken steps to enroll in the JMRP and Sender ID, please contact us again and we will further investigate the issue. Please include the SRX number you were given when beginning your JMRP enrollment.

Best regards,
Christine C.
Windows Live Hotmail Domain

Time to get angry. I looked up Microsoft on the better business bureau and got a phone number, and got ready to make as much noise as a pebble can make against the ocean that is Microsoft…

I guess Manny and Wilson were unable to resolve my issue, I assume you
are a higher level tech than they are and that you will be able to
resolve my issue.

Here’s what I am telling you:
1) 64.247.29.67 and 64.247.29.70 need to be able to send email to
users on your system, be it hotmail or any other live service.
2) I actively refuse to enroll in any microsoft programs. I will not,
and in fact CANNOT, modify DNS for all domains hosted on these
servers.

Here is what I am asking you:
1) Please, if this hasn’t already been done, remove me from any and
all blacklists.
2) Please reset the reputations for these two IP addresses and any/all
domain names registered thereto.
3) Please ensure that you don’t block these two IPs, or the IPs of
other MSP’s such as Verizon and Yahoo erroneously again.

You are costing me and my clients TIME AND MONEY! Sales have now
officially been lost because of this deliverability problem, one that
only exists with your service. I actively refuse to do any work for
you and your service that has caused me nothing but problems. I just
want your system to reset my IP’s reputations back to whatever they
were before you started this campaign against working email systems.

I hate to be one to resort to angry emails and threats, but I refuse
to do any work for you when you are causing me headaches. I will not
let this ticket close for as long as I have deliverability problems
with your service. If this ticket gets closed without my consent or
knowledge, I will continue filing tickets with your system until such
time as I am happy with your work in eliminating this bug in your
system. I will be forced to report you to the better business bureau
and go through all proper channels in Microsoft to file a complaint
with your department, several complaints if I must, I have the phone
number for one Ms. Kathy Cole sitting right here.

I just want you to know, I want this issue fixed in a reasonable
timeperiod, I’ll give you 48 hours, and I’m really not kidding around
about this issue. Please just stop with the canned responses and
telling me to do additional work. If this is not possible for you,
please escalate this ticket even higher until it comes across the eyes
of someone who can do what I am asking.

Thanks,
–Benjamin Rose

Threats, my dear Watson. That’s what it takes to get a response from Microsoft.

My name is Arc; I work on the Windows Live Hotmail Sender Support Team, helping to support Hotmail’s anti-spam efforts. I apologize for the delay in responding to your email. We have received a large number of support requests lately.

I understand the importance of you being able to send email to hotmail on the affected IP’s. This is why we are working towards a solution to your delivery issue. Please understand that we have guidelines to follow, and to lift the block on your IP’s, we need you enroll in our programs. We need you to participate in JMRP and SenderID. After which, we will be implementing a fix and mitigation.

Thank you,
Arc,
Windows Live Hotmail Sender Support Team

These people are just NOT getting it. Of course, all the while, checks of sendability come back negatively…

Our history shows that we blocked your IP (64.247.29.70 and 64.247.29.67) in the past; however, we do not have a record of any active blocks against your IP. Please confirm you are still receiving the error – 550 “Blocked due to policy reasons.”

I hope that the information that I have provided to you has been helpful. You may also be able to find additional information on common delivery questions at the Hotmail Postmaster Site found at http://postmaster.msn.com/.

Best Regards,
Marianne
Windows Live Hotmail Domain Support

IT WORKS!! Users can now send email as they wish. Almost surprising really. The bad news is, a vast majority of your email may get tagged as spam when sending to Microsoft Live users. You should encourage them to switch. If you actually made it to this point in reading, I know you’re thinking exactly the same thing I am… I hope Dan from Rutgers gets a very lucrative job offer from Microsoft email tech support and decides to take the job…

This combines two of my favorite things!! Ok, maybe not FAVORITE persay, but recently, I’ve been writing a lot of nagios plugins. And recently, I’ve been hearing a lot about how the economy has been doing rather poorly. It’s as if the people running the economy need something to monitor it and make sure it’s doing okay.

Right now it just monitors the Dow Jones Industrial Average and reports back on a range that you provide to it. My range at the current moment is warning if <=9000, critical if <=8500. The script will break if the people I'm mooching the stock data from redesign their website.
Actually, you could probably even modify this script such that it checks other stock symbols besides DJI. The possibilities are endless!
Dependencies include the curl package, an internet connection, and some time to waste.
@mstarr, you may wish to file this one under humor. 🙂